In the past year, I've bought two airguns from Archer.
The first was a Daisy 953, from archerpelletguns.com. As it turns out, Daisy did a shoddy job of finishing the breech of the barrel, and it would not chamber a pellet. I placed an email to archer, and one to Daisy. The gun included one of those tags that says: "WAIT: Do not return to the retailer, return it to us in case of problems." So when Archer replied: "Sure, send it to use and we'll get you a new one." I was impressed. I asked Daisy if they would send me a new one along with a return label to return the bad one. They also said: "Sure." So I sent it back directly to Daisy. (this saved me a few days' waiting) Still, I cannot fault Archer, as they were ready to do The Right Thing.
By contrast, my local dealer, GAT Guns, proudly posts a sign that says: "All airgun sales are final." How am I supposed to support my local dealer with hostile policy like that?
The second was a custom AR2078 I ordered from archerairguns.com, to the tune of $340. As received, the breech of the barrel was so badly finished that it chewed up the breech seal after about 5 shots. I got in touch with them (I wound up dealing directly with Stephen) and he asked me to send it back and he'd fix it right away. He offered a new barrel, but I said I'd be just as happy if he cleaned up the old one. I got the barrel back a few days later and installed it. (He also offered to go over the whole gun, but I declined, as I didn't want to ship the whole thing back) The barrel came back with a well-finished breech, but it still didn't shoot as well as I would like, as it had a flyer that wrecked otherwise tight groups. (In retrospect, it may have just needed a new breech seal, as Stephen told me QBs go through breech seals pretty quickly in .177) Nevertheless, they didn't give me any static when I asked if I could return the whole thing. To me, that was impressive, since it was a custom-built gun.
Most folks seem to love their QB78s, so I can only guess that I got a bad one.
At any rate, my point was that you can order from either of Archers' businesses and be assured of good after-the-sale service in case the product is not as you expect it.
-Jeremy
"If it's worth doing, it's worth OVERdoing."
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